balloonnneedle.com | www.themanual.co.kr
Balloon & Needle is a record label of Astronoise, Choi Joonyong, Hong Chulki, Seoul Frequency Group...in Seoul, Korea.
Choi Joonyong founded Astronoise(the first noise project in Korea) with Hong Chulki in 1997,
and has been playing so-called noise/experimental/improvised music since then.
He usually makes sounds with playback devices such as CD-player, MP3-player, VCR,
and loud-speaker by utilizing the fallacy to expose their innate sounds from the mechanism.
He is involved in collaborations with other artists and released many albums including four
solo albums made with malfunction of CD-player. He is interested in control and failure of
playing through improvisation and composition. In 2011 he is working on solo performances
questioning the value and perception of sound which changes according to the surrounding environment.
He runs a label called 'Balloon & Needle' releasing experimental music from Korea and does the cover design for most of the releases.
Hong Chulki was born in 1976, Seoul, South Korea. He is an improvising/noise musician.
His selection of instruments includes turntables (without cartridge), mixing board feedback,
laptop, and other electronics. One of his central projects is astronoise (the first noise act
of South Korea in 1997) with Choi Joonyong. After several years of playing guitar in a few indie
rock bands and spending time for military service around 2003, he began to deviate from the more
conventional way of making/listening music and to explore the area of free improvisation with everyday
record/playback devices such as CD players, MD recorders and turntables. Since then he has developed his
interest in collective non-idiomatic improvisation with acoustic/electronic noise objects. He participated
initially in Bulgasari, the first monthly free music concert series in Seoul organized by Sato Yukie and later
co-founded RELAY, the free improvisation meeting directed by Ryu Hankil.
Ryu Hankil comes from Seoul, South Korea. Graduated painter from Kyung-won University,
he played keyboard in two indie pop bands but soon got bored by conventional music and sound creation.
Hankil then released two albums as Daytripper, which was his solo electro pop project. He belongs to the
first generation of Korean electronics. The experience with electronic music animates him to look for various
new ways of creating sounds and different musical structures, emanating from found objects such as clocks,
typewriters, telephones and variety of vibrations. Since 2005 Hankil organizes regular monthly events called RELAY
, he runs his own publishing Manual, specialised on impovised music and magazines. He is a member of a new Otomo
Yoshihide’s project called FEN (Far East Network) and has played with Jason Kahn, Hong Chulki, Otomo Yoshihide,
Taku Unami, Takahiro Kawaguchi, Choi Joonyong, Mattin, Dieb 13, Ivan Palacký and many others. he extend his works
with not only musicians but also novelists by using typewriter now.